Ruey Fern Tan

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2019

Stories (9)

9 Stories

449 karma pts

?

“A Night Out” by Ruey Fern Tan

Yue didn’t torture Yang per say, but she enjoyed keeping the girl on her toes from time to time. Times like tonight, with the full moon round like a dinner plate, feeding the crevices and alleyways of the city below with a soft white glow. Was there really anything better to do than to run barefoot across construction beams? Yang’s ponytail bounced behind her head. “I need to be down there!” she said, gas...

2 comments 2
Read story

“The Restaurant with the Iron Wok” by Ruey Fern Tan

My sister never ate the food she cooked in the iron wok. I did not dare to ask her why. Each evening, all sorts of people would flood in from the streets – sweating clerks, shivering homeless people, even a few unaccompanied children – all for a taste of what simmered in that wok. Alya would stand at her station, eyes never leaving her work, with only an outstretched hand to ask for the oil now and then. One day, I was washing a coat of stickiness from my hands when a man walked through the door. He loomed prestigiously,...

6 comments 6
Read story

“In Deed” by Ruey Fern Tan

Let it be clear. B. was no sentimentalist. He was a team-jumper, an opportunist, a kill-stealer who did what he had to do to survive, faced with the grey gravelly expanses of the Out-of-Bounds. Only his mama had ever called him Bastel. But even big-time bastards like him had to bathe, so each time he ducked into a river, he made sure to bring a watch buddy. It was a hot, sticky afternoon when his regular opted out for the first time. Instead, B. was making do with a schmuck whose blood ran too cold for this weather, who ...

6 comments 6
Read story

“Night Classes” by Ruey Fern Tan

People had too much to say about stars, the way he saw it. Out here, after night classes, he could see couples kissing, children running, old men with scraggly beards strolling and pointing – all with something to say about the salt specks littering that vast expanse of darkness above. Their voices would fall onto a bed of cool air. Then these would fall between the hairs of grass, where he often lay down, relaxing after a test.Guren would plug in his earphones, and think about the people thinking about stars....

2 comments 2
Read story

“Time Waits For No One” by Ruey Fern Tan

I was wondering what R. could be doing up there, up on the second floor of the town’s only French café. She was leaning against the marble balcony, eyes blank against the sky. Downstairs, a revolution was happening, and she was doing nothing, all alone.Now, it wasn’t any of my business. People could behave as they liked, is what my Ma always said. Still, something about the way R. stood in stillness made me stop on the roadside and put down my box of supplies. I stopped, and I scrutinized her.Her clothes were cleanly and unt...

0 comments 0
Read story

“Marketing Change” by Ruey Fern Tan

An ant was crawling up his wrist. It must have gotten into the cereal at some point, perhaps while he was at work. Now it sought to escape via the hand buried in cornflakes, currently extracting and depositing fistfuls of expired cereal to one dry mouth.Aaron was watching the telly. On-screen, the woman in the bathing suit seemed to watch him back. He looked away. At work, they said advertising was bad for your brain. They said it was a distortion in the free market, a destructive force. The dark lashes blinking up at him did not c...

2 comments 2
Read story

“The Treasures” by Ruey Fern Tan

Kara’s hands were sticky. It was a thing she noticed absently, rubbing the sludge between two palms as she surveyed the tunnel. Half of it was wax, fallen from her candle. The other half, she didn’t want to think about. She noticed it, just as she noticed that there were three open doors, branching off, that there were ornate fixtures on the wall, now devoid of their torches, that there were bats squealing somewhere above. Then there was the dungeon vault, now behind her, cold and inky black.She pinched a bit of slime off her palm ...

1 comment 1
Read story

“On Becoming Marcus” by Ruey Fern Tan

It was just a week that the capital spent without Marcus. These were long days, in the middle of August, when the stinging sheets of rain left most sane people huddling like hedgehogs underneath the pale white domes of their houses. Petrichor wafted through heavy air. Rich and thick, the scent marked the tail-end of one such shower as Con made his way through the city.Con despised to walk alone. He remembered this now, especially, dragging the wagon ...

25 comments 25 WINNER 🏆
Read story

“Weekend Tea” by Ruey Fern Tan

He came wearing a yellow raincoat. At least, that is what I remember him wearing, the day you forgot to answer the door. Memories from then rotted in my mind for a week afterwards, before this writing, before you. Knee deep in mud, he sloshed his way behind me to the bottom step of your porch. He said:“Why do you keep doing this?”His voice was thin, unpleasant, confusing. I remember I tossed him a s...

1 comment 1
Read story

Author bio

A student and hobbyist writer.

Winning 1 story 🏆

Contest #14
On Becoming Marcus – read story